Safety first

Seen from the outside, planes do not seem to have changed much over the past few decades. But there have been major changes on the inside. Research in aviation technology has in recent times concentrated on two areas: maximising safety, and minimising fuel consumption.

Improving safety has, above all, meant automation. Computers are increasingly used to guide aircraft, with pilots performing fewer basic functions. As pilot error accounts for about 80% of fatal aircraft accidents, could pilots eventually be phased out? Pilotless flights are already being tested.

Automation also frees up crew members to concentrate on general awareness and communication with colleagues, enabling them to react more quickly to problems. Computers now set the altitude and speed at which the aircraft can operate with the most efficiency, eliminating the need for a third pilot (the flight engineer) in the cockpit.

In general the automation is meant to enhance, not as a substitute. “None of this technology is intended to replace the pilot,” says Antonio De Palmas, president of EU and NATO relations at aircraft manufacturer Boeing. “It is there for convenience and used at the discretion of each flight crew.”

But over-dependence on automation raises safety concerns. For instance, pilots need to maintain skills that are essential in case of technical failure – a problem addressed, according to airlines, by regular training.

Automation plays a major part in reducing fuel use. Sticking to the most efficient flight patterns and altitudes can save fuel, as can more precise landing patterns. But changes in aircraft design have also contributed to saving fuel.

Rainer Von Wrede, head of environment engineering at Airbus, says weight-reduction and design improvements mean that today’s planes consume “just 30% of the fuel of an aircraft 40 years ago”.

Market forces Restricting emissions through a market mechanism such as the EU’s emissions trading scheme will, it is hoped, encourage the development of technologies that reduce emissions. But the high price of fuel – fuel costs typically represent the largest area of airline expenditure – is a more powerful incentive.

The European Commission has joined forces with airlines and aircraft manufacturers to develop the Clean Sky programme to co-ordinate research. “We can expect the ETS to bring more incentive [for research], but we also know that fuel prices are getting higher and higher,” says Eric Dautriat, the programme’s executive director.

The Commission has also launched the Aeronet III Co-ordination Action Platform to encourage research, with a goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 50% and nitrous oxide emissions by 80% by 2020.

Airbus spends €2 billion a year on research and development, much of it on reducing fuel use. Von Wrede says the emergence of nano-technology has opened up a range of new possibilities. “With everything we see coming on the nano-materials side, there is no end” to what is possible, he says.

Air-traffic management is one way of influencing emissions. Another is the gradual introduction of biofuel into regular aircraft fuel, but this remains controversial, because of concerns that biofuel is displacing food crops or causing emissions because of the amount of land the crops take up.

Airlines have experimented with flights that use some biofuel as an addition to regular fuel. It is hoped that one day a ratio of 50/50 will be economically feasible, but the advent of completely biofuel-powered aircraft remains unlikely.

Bill Hemmings of green transport group T&E is sceptical about the feasibility of biofuel. “The fuel suppliers are not in the slightest bit interested in providing this stuff for airlines,” he says. “They can make much more money making it for land transport, because of the provisions in the fuel-quality directive.”

He says it is unclear whether biofuel could ever be viable for aircraft, while it could cause more harm than good by changing land-use patterns. Von Wrede agrees that the industry must proceed with caution. “We must be very careful, the biofuels must come from something that is not in the food chain,” he says.

Even with advances in technology, flight patterns and fuel sourcing, there are those who say that the only way to reduce aviation emissions is to reduce the number of flights. It is in the interests of the aviation industry to prove those sceptics wrong.